Kung Fu is an umbrella term for all Chinese martial arts and is often incorrectly assumed to be a martial art itself. While many dojos advertise Kung Fu as its own martial art, those schools usually incorporate a variety of techniques from many different Chinese martial arts such as Wing Chun.

In this YouTube video however, we kind of see that this type of training is not effective nor are these practitioners. Imagine what a kickboxing or boxer would do to these guys. It would get ugly very quickly. However, keep in mind this video is from 1982. That would predate the UFC by more than a decade. At that point in the history of martial arts nobody knew what really worked. It was all theoretical.

People’s knowledge of martial arts was oftentimes confused with martial arts movies and what looked cool on screen. The UFC was the first time we could really see what worked and what didn’t. Nowadays we know (most of us anyhow) the correct way to train techniques is to try them out against a resisting opponent who is trying to defeat us. Punching and kicking air is only one part of training (shadowboxing) and when trying techniques it has to be against someone who is fully resisting.

In this video clip there is a man with his hands down and behind his back simply ‘looking cool’. As previously stated, imagine what a kickboxing or boxer would do to someone with his hands behind his back. It truly is amazing how far we’ve come in terms of martial arts knowledge since the first UFC and the dawn of MMA. The throw looks pretty cool at the one minute and thirty five second mark but that isn’t going to work against someone with wrestling or grappling knowledge.